Claiming a tax loss for your business

Before you claim a tax loss, make sure you have correctly claimed the expenses that you are entitled to. Overclaiming expenses can put your business in an incorrect tax loss situation.

It’s also important to remember to apportion your expenses correctly so that only the business portion of the expense is claimed, and not any personal component of the expense.

Keeping accurate and complete records will help you keep track of your tax losses. It can help you avoid incorrectly carrying back a tax loss or carrying forward tax losses to deduct in future years.

If your business makes a tax loss in the current year, you can generally carry forward that loss and claim a deduction for your business in a future year.

You may be able to offset current year losses if you’re a sole trader or an individual partner in a partnership and meet certain conditions.

If you’re an eligible corporate entity (company, corporate limited partnership or public trading trust), you may be able to claim the loss carry-back tax offset. You can check your eligibility for this tax offset using our loss carryback offset tool.

Source: ATO